Jean-Olivier Chénier

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Jean-Olivier Chénier (December 9, 1806–December 14, 1838) was a physician in Lower Canada (present-day Quebec). Born in Lachine (or maybe Montreal).^[1] During the Lower Canada Rebellion, he commanded the Patriote forces in the Battle of Saint-Eustache. Trapped with his men in a church by the British troops who set flames to the building, he tries to escape by the windows but is killed to the cry of "Remember Weir!", a reference to George Weir, executed for treason, as he was a spy in Patriote ranks.^[2]

After a great pillaging of the village, the British badly treated the body of Chénier to scare and humiliate Patriote supporters. In Histoire des Patriotes, Gérald Filteau tells more.

	Chénier was found about six o'clock and taken to Addison's Inn where his body suffered indignities which those present called an autopsy. During the three days the body was left exposed, a witness swore he had seen it stretched out on the tavern bar: "The chest was opened and the heart hung outside it. To a passing Patriote they cried: 'Come see your Chénier's rotten heart!' ...I noticed that rifle blows had left his head covered with clots of blood." A correspondent for Le Canadien, also an eyewitness, wrote in his diary: "We were in Saint-Eustache last Sunday. The dead had been left lying about. Chénier was on the counter, so badly mutilated that he was almost cut into four pieces, his heart on the outside. A sickening spectacle to witness."
—Géraid Filteau, Histoire des Patriotes, Éditions l'Aurore/Univers, 1980, p.370

Chénier Street honours his memory in Montreal, as does the Jean-Olivier-Chénier Section of the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Society of Montreal. The Chénier Cell of the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) was also named after him.

[edit] References

^ "Chénier (Jean-Olivier)" at La Mémoire du Québec
^ The Black Book of English Canada by Normand Lester, McClelland & Stewart Ltd., Toronto, 2002, p.85.